The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Global Chamber® and The Consular Corps of Arizona will be hosting a group of Japanese delegates on a tour of Arizona and Southern California at a private evening event with members of the Arizona business and government community on Monday, March 9th at Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s desert home and architectural laboratory. The delegation is led by former Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki and is working on making vibrant new connections between Japan and Arizona.
The group is holding special presentations to convey the strength and appeal of Japan and to improve Japan-US relations. The members of this special delegation come from a unique variety of backgrounds and were chosen for their perspectives on diplomacy, business, lifestyle, culture, women’s issues and education. The full five-person delegation is as follows:
Ichiro Fujisaki (Group Leader): Mr. Fujisaki lived four times in the US. First was as a junior high student in Seattle in the early ‛60s. Next occasion was in early ’70s at Brown University and Stanford University. Then he served twice in D.C. in the late ’90s and from 2008 to 2012. The latter was as Japanese Ambassador. He also served in Jakarta, Paris, London and Geneva. In Tokyo, he was Director General for North America Affairs of Foreign Ministry before being appointed as Deputy Foreign Minister in 2002. Now President of the America-Japan Society, Inc.
Nobuo Yoneyama: Mr. Yoneyama, who is the former head of Mitsui and Company‘s Washington, D.C., Office, founded Nisshin Global Corporation in 2013 to connect Japanese SMEs to foreign business partners and consumers by helping them disseminate information about their unique technologies, products and services.
Azusa “Hanah” Tobimatsu: Azusa was born and raised in Aichi Prefecture and received her undergraduate degree in law from Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. She had been sent to Marshall University in the State of West Virginia for two years from 2011 to 2013 as an outreach coordinator by Japan Foundation through the Japan Outreach Initiative Program.
Momoka Seino: Ms. Seino is a violinist and a singer-songwriter. She is also appointed as the ambassador of sightseeing for Hokkaido region, part of northern Japan.
Erika Takeda: Erika Takeda is a 4th-year student at Keio University SFC. She is currently researching the United States Constitution with Professor Naoyuki Agawa, with a focus on Internet and law. She is also an intern at the America-Japan Society in Tokyo.
The three organizations that have come together for this special event are united in their desire to help make this a landmark occasion for more Japan-Arizona relations.
Global Chamber® is an international platform for CEOs, executives and professionals in 500 metropolitan areas to take on the world of global business more effectively and successfully. Service offerings of the Global Chamber® ‘fill in the gaps’ that happen in cross border business to provide members with more customers, more trusted partners and more expert resources to grow globally, lowering risk and accelerating growth.
The Consular Corps of Arizona and its members serve as ambassadors of their countries to Arizona, working to build and foster awareness and relationships between Arizonans and our international friends. In doing so, it is the hope of the Consular Corps of Arizona that we can all contribute to a better understanding and appreciation of each other’s countries, cultures, and communities. Today, the Consular Corps of Arizona has 32 consulates, four career and 28 honorary.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation’s vision is to be a leading, global, multi-disciplinary center for education, scholarship, debate and research committed to the place of architecture and arts in enriching the quality and dignity of life. The Foundation is dedicated to the preservation and stewardship of Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the Taliesin Collections, to shaping architecture and design at the highest level, and to transforming people’s lives through the living experience of Frank Lloyd Wright’s body of work.
Taliesin West is a National Historic Landmark offering a totally immersive tour experience. Tour guests are welcomed into every room and space—nothing on the tour is left behind ropes or under glass. Each visit is filled with surprise, majestic views, and intimate interior details as guests discover the places that Frank Lloyd Wright lived, worked, and played in the Arizona desert. Wright and his apprentices built Taliesin West out of the stone and sand that surrounded them in the Sonoran Desert at the foothills of the McDowell Mountains. Many of those apprentices (“the Fellowship”) who worked and lived alongside Mr. Wright still live at Taliesin West, as do the current students and faculty of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture—making Taliesin West an ongoing, vibrant community.
